For the NGDGU File

It’s not an emergency but… just when I’ve gone out of my way to explicitly praise the WordPress app several times here and in comments to fellow bloggers, it’s quit working properly. I can still poast just fine, which is the most important thing, since peeps would surely have the big sads without their fix of meeee, but my reader is all screwed up.

Here’s the haps. I open it up and get a few dozen new poasts, like from the past hour. All good. Then it leaps to poasts from 12 hours ago with nothing in between! If I close out and return, I may get a few randoms from the missing hours, out of order, but… ughhh. Yesterday I didn’t get the prompt poasts, but luckily someone had a story with them all in it, so I saved that. Today I can only find the one I used in my first line. I’m missing Scott’s and Fandango’s and Sheryl’s and others.

DO NOT LIKE. Bad app is bad.

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Caps & Cobras

It’s been over 6 months since I deleted Facebook and that was a brilliant move, if I do say so myself. Not only did it free up scads of time for blogging (both reading and poasting), which is so much more enjoyable than scrolling through memes and trollery, but it also eliminated a huge bunch of negativity and annoyance from my day. I can read a quick burst of what people are saying about trending topics on twitter, and that’s enough to keep me in the culture loop.

But I need to make another big change, one I’ve been resisting, out of sheer laziness, much like I avoided dumping FB for far too long. And that habit is checking the “news.” I put this in quotes because most of what I’m seeing isn’t real news at all but garbage from bubbleheads. This is beyond what Alyssa fucking Milano has to say about anything, as if I give a shit, but supposed journalists who aren’t. All they do is recycle crap from other sites and try to manipulate our feelings. I know we all know this, but I’m finally doing something about it.

I want to see stuff like natural disasters, famous people’s deaths, election results, etc., reported clearly and dispassionately. I don’t want to be told something is tragic or devastating. I can figure that out myself. If I see a photo of a celeb or their spouse, I’ll decide what to think about their looks; I don’t need to have my opinion spoonfed to me like I’m a toddler in a high chair. Wtfff?

Today I changed my news preferences to see only science and health articles, info about cats and psychology, puzzles and math, etc., along with factual reports of current events from NPR. No more opinions of how I should be terrified of Trump or believe Kavanaugh isn’t an asshole or whatever. That shit isn’t news! Kellyanne’s yapping is not news. Kanye’s blather isn’t news. I don’t care what kind of stupid hat Melania wears while she flits around doing nothing. And holy fucking shit Taylor Swift has an opinion, so let’s all bow down. 🤮

I also dumped all the royals ~ I’ve been punished with nonstop “news” of them because I clicked on a few Markle stories back when. Now they’re all banned. What a bunch of bores. No, sorry, it’s not their fault the idiot press feels they must report on what little George has for lunch. And speaking of hats! The royals are bananas over hats. My god.

Anyway, I’ve been rewarded already! The first story that came up was about cannibal cobras. 🐍 You might think, well sure, if they’re really hungry… tastes like chicken, right? Wrong! They like to nom up other snakes. Because why? Because a snake is really easy for another snake to eat! Bet you never thought about that. Neither did I. We were too busy reading about dumb hats to think about interesting things, such as cobras’ dietary preferences.

I’m gonna have more cool shit like this here in the future. You can hang your hat on it. Or you can keep your hat on… 😘

Wherein she offends everyone and their little dog too…

I might not poast this. We’ll see. Sometimes I write a dating story (yes, about you) and trash it because nobody needs to see all that whiny dreckage. But lately I’ve been giving less of a fuck, the way I used to in that nice space during 2012 when I wasn’t dating before I began again (big mistake) and worried what potentials might think of my rants. Who cares?!

Anyway. I’m disgusted and disturbed by so many aspects of the Kavanaugh mess. In general, I keep my political opinions on twitter twatter, and even there am pretty low key, but when I “like” someone else’s tweet, it doesn’t fully explain my POV and sometimes I feel like expressing it in my own words.

1. In 1982, I was date-raped by a drunken Irish guy in Chicago. I call it date-rape not to minimize other women’s experiences but because we were literally on a date and I (foolishly) believed him when he said, afterward, that he’d call me for another one. At that point, despite what had just occurred, I still liked him. I decided his aggressive behavior was because of drinking and could be forgiven. I was 20 years old; he was 24. But days passed, he didn’t call, and I found out he had a fiancée. We worked in different areas of a large insurance company and when we next saw each other in the hall, he completely ignored me.

Since time had passed, I didn’t tell anyone about this, not for years anyway. Right then, I was most concerned for my job because this had happened at work. He had asked me for drinks and left his briefcase in my office because it could be locked. I didn’t even have a clue he was plotting something. We walked to a bar, had a few beers (2 for me; 4-5 for him), and returned to the building, where we had to sign in. I was a low level employee and he wasn’t. For weeks, I worried that some manager reviewed those after hours sheets and I would be called into HR to explain why I’d signed in past 8pm on a Friday night. But that never happened.

About a year and a half later, right before I moved to California, I was working at a new company and I saw him in the food court. He stopped and chatted with me like we were old friends. It was so strange! I have to admit though that the date-rape incident itself was not traumatizing. His lying was an issue however, plus the fact that he’d been cheating on his fiancée. This was the beginning of the mountain of lies and broken promises I’ve experienced from men either first or second hand throughout my life.

2. The Kavanaugh circus brought this back to mind. I’m reminded of the fact that most assaults against women are done by men they know, not strangers in alleys. You don’t expect men you know to betray your trust, whether they’re a school friend or a coworker or even some new man you’ve chatted with for a while on a dating site. Why do they have to be such assholes?!? And it’s true we don’t know for sure that Kavanaugh is guilty of assaulting anyone, but he sure acted like an asshole. To clear his good name? Give me a fucking break. I think worse of him now. He acted guilty. Belligerently guilty. Exactly the way our horrible POTUS acts when anyone criticizes him, which is why I tend to believe every accusation against him, except for the super looney tunes ones.

3. I’m sick of the huge number of people in this country who have been brainwashed into believing that only Ivy League law school grads can be federal judges. And Yale and Harvard at that? There are a lot of law schools, peeps! But this myth is self-perpetuating with the judges from those schools choosing interns from the same schools and these are the ones who climb the system. It’s so ironic coming from the “drain the swamp” people, the very same people who sneered at “coastal elites” during Trump’s whole campaign ~ what the holy fuck do they think prep school fratboy Kavanaugh is?!? No, they luv him cuz POTUS said to.

4. Okay fine, everyone’s a hypocrite. I get that. The whole “coastal elite” sneering was just a defense against the uncalled for diss of “flyover country.” It’s all shitty. Huge swaths of our country shouldn’t be labeled and dismissed as somehow unworthy or lesser than. That’s why we’re in the terrible divided place we’re at now. I feel it when people in Los Angeles label everyone in Orange County as a rightwinger. Wrong! There are plenty of Democrats here.

5. Speaking of Democrats, they really need to get their act together. Toughen up! I’m tired of your whining and tantrums. Stop yelling at Republicans in restaurants and focus on getting your goddamn lazy friends to vote blue. That’s the way out of this. Not with stupid hats and signs and boycotts. Quit thinking some “moderate” Republican will save us, for FUCKSAKE. There are no moderate Republicans ~ they are all gonna do what Trump says. How much more proof do you need?

6. Do not blame the confirmation on Susan Collins. Yes, she held out till the last minute, so she ended up with a bunch of attention, but she’s a Republican and voted with her peeps. She didn’t betray anyone. Who did? That fucker Joe Manchin. Don’t let him off the hook and blame a woman! He’s a damn Democrat!

7. The supplemental investigation was a farce and should not have been tolerated unless it was allowed to be open ended. But the Dems should have been much more on top of Kav’s shady financial issues way before this high school stuff even came up. How did he pay for his house? His country club membership? Why did his credit card debt suddenly and mysteriously disappear? The Dems just let this shit slide. I am so very disappointed in them.

8. There should be term limits for all Congress critters imo. Why do we have so many doddering old folks in there? It’s ridonkulous.

9. For the record, since I see a bunch of liberal-haters carrying on about it: yes, I think Bill Clinton is or was a disgusting creep toward women in his personal life and it’s a shame we didn’t believe women back then when they accused men of assault and harassment. (It’s a shame we didn’t believe Anita Hill; I wish Thomas was not on the Court.) And yes, for the record, I believe Keith Ellison’s ex when she says that he assaulted her.

Note how nothing has changed! Our terrible POTUS actually mocks survivors of assault and his awful supporters laugh. Cuz victims are funny! Sexual assault never happens to a female Republican, nope. What isn’t funny to them? The possibility of a wealthy privileged white conservative man being denied a promotion. That’s fucking intolerable!

10. Finally, I will not now or ever publicly name my date-rapist, nor will I contact him privately for some BS “closure.” I don’t need that. I did google him the otter week. He’s a divorced real estate broker in the Chicago area with a current pic available. He has aged well ~ maybe he quit drinking. No danger he’ll be named to the Supreme Court, so I don’t need to save America from his rapeyness. Besides, he’s a Democrat.

In Praise Of The WP App

No, they aren’t paying me. Though they could, if they wanted to. I wouldn’t mind. 🙂

I was not an app fan, until lately. Why do I need to clutter up my phone with dumb icons, I used to whine? I can just go to the websites. But then I got clued into the fact that apps gobble less battery. Ooh, that’s nice. Next I realized that Twitter is actually better on an app. Can’t explain ~ it just is. After that came the banking and insurance apps ~ not only more convenient, but more secure. Well!

But that’s enough. I’m certainly not going to write lengthy poasts and emails on apps, I sniffed. I need a real keyboard for these dreamy endeavors. And then I destroyed my laptop on July 4th with a glass of iced tea. Whoops! Since I didn’t feel like running right out and buying a new laptop, I began using my phone for everything. Including those long emails and bloggeries.

That’s where the WP app comes in. Not only is it ideal for starting and saving draft ideas, it also has a great newsfeed. I can read, like, and save other poasts! 🤩 In the past, whenever I wanted to save another blogger’s poast for linking later, I had to keep it open in a browser tab. Sometimes I screwed that up and closed it. Now, all saved poasts are in a tab in the app. So fab! Easier to select categories and tags via the app and to schedule poasts. Also, it’s easy peasy to edit or delete one of my own published rants and do blog admin stuffs.

It’s not perfect, alas. This morning I was forced to return to the browser newsreader when I realized that the app reader had missing poasts. Yep, there was a 6-hour window in the middle of the night through which a pile of poasts up and fluttered bye. 🦋 Sad! And the browser newsreader felt clunkier than ever. I could like poasts but not save any. There were annoying “you might like these” blogs mished in with the ones I follow. This made me appreciate the WP app even more. They need to keep the windows closed though.

However, fingers x’d, I am picking up a new (used) Mac tonight, so I will have a real keyboard again shortly. As the days grow shorter, I will resume my favored position of sitting at my kitchen table, WIP in front of me on the screen, while staring out the window at nothingness. But I will keep any beverages far, far away from the puter! 😜

All About Orange

The fact that I have this photo in my blog media library gives me the idea I have written negatively about orange before. But instead of searching for that poast, and lazily efficiently reblogging it, I’ve already banged out a new one. Maybe next time I’ll remember to look for a pic before I start typing like a maniac. Who wants to bet on that?

Orange has never been a favorite color or flavor of mine. There are a few exceptions. Color-wise, I like a dash of bright orange with pink and yellow, lime and purple, for that crazy fruit bowl tropical look. Perfect for the muumuu you need on a cruise to cover up the 10 pounds you gain the first three days before the dysentery hits. And naturally orange is the appropriate base color for Halloween shirts, preferably with black cats, owls, and bats decorating a spooky crooked tree. Boo!

Food-wise, oranges suck. What is up with these things? All pulpy and seedy, with icky white strings you have to keep peeling off. Feh! Waaay too much work. I don’t mind some orange juice, sans pulp, if it’s mixed with mango juice, but that’s a lot of sugar. Did I mention I’m eating a lot less sugar now? Paula’s diet… always a fascinating topic, but we’ll leave that for another poast. As far as the actual taste of orange? Meh. It’s good in cake, I guess. But there’s that pesky sugar issue again! Same with Panda Express orange chicken (soooo sweet and yummy). Oh, here we go with the Panda Express haters piling on to tell me it’s not real Chinese food. 🙄🙄🙄

Okay. Not gonna write a book rn. Bottom line: orange is pretty much last on my list, except for pretty flowers obviously, and it’s not because of you know who.

Stats up the WaZOO

I can’t keep pace with many of the new bloggers I’ve discovered this year, but even though I don’t match their prodigious daily output, I’m certainly happy to have them in my feed. Such a fab variety of creative writings and so many diverse POVs! Love that. Lots of these peeps talk about their stats and I don’t pay much attention to mine, except to occasionally whine that no one has bought any of my books lately so why do I even bother yada then I get over it.

This morning I decided to check my actual bloggeroo stats and I took screenshots so I could share. I figured hey now what would my blogfans like to do on a nice weekend… beach, BBQ, hike, bike, garden… ? Nahhh. They’ll wanna peruse my stats.

First, not counting this poast, I have a grand total of 519 poasted poasts since I began this blog on March 25, 2011 with a cupcake. I have deleted a lot of poasts, mostly complaints about dating sites/men because I thought, ha ha, I might meet a new man, and I wouldn’t want him to see all that bitching, since of course he’d read my blog cover to cover yet wouldn’t know a thing about the Wayback Machine: Dating Logic 🙄. Thank gawd that’s over. There are months of little to no activity when I was busy moving or getting divorced. I also used to spend much of my free social media time on Facebook, but I quit there this March because #facebooksucks. Since then, I’ve been blogging much more, yayyy.

Second, I have 1,045 total comments, as follows.

Many bloggers have a higher hit ratio of likes, but I am pleased with this.

My most commented-on poast, by far, remains The Duke vs. the Secretary (which is also my most-viewed poast, natch), from way back in June 2011.

Third, commenters. This, my friends, is where things may get a little bit hairy. Are you ready for some drama? Buckle up! Year after year, when I poast the stats WordPress gives me on their Happy New Year’s card, Roy wins top commenter. It’s just the Way Things Are. But right now, in the doldrums of August, lil Miss PJ has snuck up on Roy and edged him out of the top spot! ZOMG!

(By “top” I mean second, obviously. I’m always Numero Uno.)

Don’t panic, Roy! There’s still enough time before the end of the year for you to regain your title. Hell, it’s anyone’s game really. Just comment your hearts 💕 out, folks! It’s not too late!

Btw, I think it’s only fair to mention that Stan was my very first commenter, back on the cupcake poast we discussed several paras ago. You’re all still with me, right? Good. There may be a quiz after.

Finally, I will finish up with the observation that my topics of noodling, fun, and whatever have the most views, which are basically the topics about nothing. Give the people what they want, I always say.

Actually I never say that. I simply enjoy going on and on and on about absolutely nothing. And I would keep doing it even sans validation. But validation is a lovely thing. See? Kbai. More later!

PS: Forgot to mention that I’m following 510 blogs (this constantly increases), and have 333 WordPress followers. I have other followers not on WP ~ email, twitter, and just regular peeps. Love you all, mwah! Kbai for reals.

Regarding the Discover Option [rant]

The “Discover” new blogs button isn’t unique to the WordPress app, of course ~ we can access it from our WP browser menu as well. I’ve clicked on it a few times over the years. And every time I exit in disgust a minute later. Why? I’ll tell you why!

Those blogs featured under Discover don’t need to be discovered cuz they’re already discovered AF. They have 500-700 likes already on the poasts we’re supposed to believe are new and interesting. Hey, let’s all discover The New York Times! Whoa. Bet we never thought of reading Newsweek or CNN. Hey, how about that obscure People magazine… bet they need some readers.

Feh. I would like to discover more blogs that have small readerships (like ahem mine) in order to help them grow. Talking about fun, interesting personal blogs for the most part, not those other kind. This is a major reason why I enjoy the games and prompts ~ they help me find new blogs to follow.

Big shout-out to the bloggers who have taken the time to start and maintain the prompts: Fandango, the WOTD group, Flash Fiction, et al. I plan to participate even more in these and other prompts because (1) they’re fun, (2) it’s cool to see the creative ideas others come up with, and (3) they provide a good avenue to find new blogs.

But I won’t be clicking on WP Discover again!

Ch-ch-changes

I just downloaded the WordPress app and so far it seems fabulous! They’ve really improved it since I tried it a zillion years ago. It takes a lot of motivation for me to deviate from my habits, so this is a big deal, blogging from an app. Truth be told, I’m a bit resistant to apps in general, misliking the idea of cluttering up my phone with icons. Why can’t I just use my browser? But this WP app is very nice. Very nice indeed. Of course, now I’ll need to d/l more apps to even out the row, but never mind that.

My motivation is partly due to the fact that blogging from a phone browser is rather clunky, and while I have a semi-solution in my old Kindle Fire, it’s still imperfect. (Hard to access media from there.) Also, I like using one device. I already have a sweet Kindle for reading and the Fire is pure backup, which I like to keep at home.

Isn’t this fascinating? I thought my fans would be enthralled with an OCD data dump.

I’m feeling good about all the things I’ve abandoned along the path toward enlightenment, or death, whichever comes first ~ husbands, real estate, dating sites, Facebook, fiction writing, and thigh highs. Thank gawd I never have to wear stupid thigh highs again! What a dumb invention.

Oh, and sushi. Blech!

Regarding Writer’s Block

Dusty commented about WB in my last poast. It’s true that I can’t seem to sit down and force myself to write the things I believe I “should” write, such as the next short story in my epic collection of long connected stories, or even finish one of Anna’s hot romances I’ve left in limbo. But that doesn’t mean I can’t write anything ~ in fact, I’ve been blogging a ton (have actually deleted several ridiculously verbose and pointlessly rambling poasts in the last several weeks before I hit publish), emailing a bunch, and tweeting a twitload. I have even poemed a bit. It’s just the fiction I’m not into any longer and thus have given it up.*

Fiction writing feels like regression. Maybe that’s a lazy copout, but it’s how I feel right now. Writing fiction was an escape from bad times in my life, and my life is no longer bad. I don’t need an escape into a fantasy world of make-believe characters I focus on instead of my own situation. Unlike poetry, which stimulates my love for language, wordplay, and brief, intense emotional exploration, writing fiction feels hollow and fake. (This doesn’t apply to fiction reading at all, which I still love. Or movies dur!)

Writing about real events, however ~ slightly enhanced for entertainment value ~ such as the “dating stories,” is still a lot of fun for me. I was going to write about my trip to the wilds of Los Angeles last Tuesday, the crazy Bentley who tailgated me (a freaking Bentley!), the trippy sidewalks, my adorable granddaughter (I’m a grandmother now, if you didn’t know), etc., but there wasn’t any outstandingly funny moment to regale y’all with, and I’m all about the regaling.

[Just had to delete some amusing nonsense about regal and regaling because the words aren’t related. Dictionaries are our friends! But eccentric comes from outside the circle of normal, which was the WOTD yesterday, and since I can’t sleep in this heat even with a Valium and it’s now tomorrow, that word is definitely appropriate.]

Now, at this point you may be wondering if this poast isn’t one of those ridic rambles that should go into the trash heap… no! First, this is an experiment to see if it’s easier to blog from my old Kindle, since it’s larger than my phone and has a more finger-friendly keyboard. Second, it allows open tabs to be visible at the top, like a puter, which is helpful for switching back and forth when looking stuff up while blogging. Third, it’s difficult to create links when blogging by phone (have not tried the WordPress app) ~ basically have to write them down on a piece of paper and type them in again like a cavewoman. But on my Kindle I can copy and paste like a normal person. However, there is one issue: my bitmojis! I only have access to media already uploaded to WP, no new bitmojis or photos on my phone, since this thing isn’t connected to my phone. Of course, I could save this as a draft and then reopen it on my phone, where all my pics are. But that is not exactly an efficient, streamlined operation, is it now?

I put the previously used Jenga blocks up top, meh. Other solutions were: (1) use a previous bitmoji that didn’t really go with this poast; (2) use an ugly stock WP photo of blocks; or (3) begin some complicated process of installing an app on my phone that will give my Kindle access to photos, but it is 3am and I don’t wannu.

There is a rumor going around I might be getting a Mac, which will render all this angsting obsolete, but in the meantime… the blog abides.

*One of my friends said he learned in a yoga class recently that stress damages the brain and is potentially one of the leading causes of dementia. So, this just proves I’m on the right track giving up stressful things like dating, Facebook, fiction writing, etc. If only I could give up driving, that would be AWESOME!

Oh, now I have to stick on all the tags that will allegedly attract zillions of readers to this poast. Bwahahaha!

Misty Memories

It’s fitting on this last day of the Daily Prompt, which is retrospective, that I take a look back through the mists of time to the beginning of my blogging experience.

I started on a whim in September 2003 with Ultrablog, since my fellow writers from Usenet seemed to be jumping in. The name came about because my Usenet handle was Ultraviolet and I tried to stick with a purple motif, though the details changed. I had butterflies and various templates on blogger, and then I bought my domain ~ and I even purchased an artsy template once when I had loads of hits per day. I never monetized any of my blogs however. Too much work.

My Ultrablog topics ran the gamut. Opining on funny pieces of news, poasting about aminals, sharing family events & pics, mocking things I found online, offering up Sunday word games for fans, etc. I jabbered fairly frequently about writing and my writing progress, or the lack thereof. I was fairly open in calling out people who could have recognized themselves in my takedowns, but mostly I sailed through okay.

But I got into a flamewar over pitb*lls, which became insane, and I wanted to delete those poasts and some comment threads. I ended up ruining my comment numbering system and couldn’t get it right again. This drove me bananas. I decided it was time to archive Ultrablog and start a new, lighter blog with no flaming.

Thus was born Cats, Cupcakes & Shooze, the most boring blog in Blogville. It didn’t last long, maybe a year, and I didn’t even bother archiving it. Around the same time, my mom was dying, so I began a private blog to record my thoughts and feelings about the situation, and to get support from close friends. I still have that blog archived.

For around a year or so, I was blogless. IKR? But I was in a relationship I couldn’t talk about, going thru a divorce, still upset about my mom, etc., and it seemed pointless to start another blog when I’d have to self-censor about so many topics. I was very careful on all the other social media too. But ultimately I missed blogging too much and revved up this WordPress account and my domain name.

At first, I poasted only poetry, song lyrics, book reviews, cupcakes pics, etc. But then in the summer of 2011 my divorce became final, and a few months later my unspeakable romantic relationship crashed. After that, I felt freer to poast as I pleased, with very few limits. That said, I frequently delete poasts I don’t like having around, but that’s my own choice. Only once I deleted a few poasts upon request.

People gravitate to personal stories ~ I know I do. That’s how we connect with strangers on the internet, by glimpses into each other’s lives, shared interests, mutual points of caring. I don’t want to read some blogger’s opinion on the news headlines. Boring! I said this all the time on Facebook ~ why are you peeps regurgitating CNN at me? I know how to read the news. I’d rather hear about a fun new restaurant you found or something cute your dog did, or even that you stubbed your toe, so I can offer sympathy.

I always tell myself to poast more about writing and read serious writers, but I enjoy so many things that I keep adding “non-writer” bloggers to my feed anyway. I add bloggers who mostly poast photos of flowers. I love flowers! And kitties! And sunsets. And doggies scampering on beaches. And travel stories even though I don’t travel. And philosophy. And movie reviews. And comedy! There are so many wonderful things to love in this world. But if you poast dark sad twisted poetry, I’ll probably love that too.

Fifteen years of blogging, more or less. Wow.

I think we’re up to date.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Retrospective